Walter Rosenblum / Message from the Heart

Curated by Naomi and Nina Rosenblum, USA

Andrey Martynov, Russia

As a young man, Walter Rosenblum, who was born in New York City, was introduced to documentary photography at the Photo League. After serving as League secretary, he soon became the editor of the organization’s journal Photo Notes and, in 1941, president. He began a career as a professional photographer working for Life photographer Eliot Elisofon, and then was employed by the United States government for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration.

Walter Rosenblum. Message from the heart

Rosenblum’s active service in World War II landed him on Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944. First as a still photographer and then as a movie cameraman, he filmed the advance of General Patton’s army through France and Germany recording among other events the liberation of the concentration camp at Dachau. He was among the most decorated of World War II combat photographers, receiving a silver star, a purple heart and a Presidential Unit Citation.

In 1946 he returned to Europe, commissioned by the Unitarian Service Committee to photograph refugees from Spain being held in detention camps in the south of France. On his return to the United States, on the advice of Paul Strand whom he had met while at the Photo League, he began a teaching career in the Art Department of Brooklyn College. He advanced from instructor to full professor until his retirement in 1978. In addition, he taught for several years at The Cooper Union, and for twenty-five summers at the Yale School of Music and Art. His teaching schedule enabled him to choose photographic projects of personal interest, among which he counted as most significant the time he spent in East Harlem and the South Bronx and a year spent photographing in Haiti. He was a recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a National Endowment of the Arts Grant, a New York State Council of the Arts Grant, a Simon Wiesenthal Award, the Infinity Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Center of Photography and an honorary doctorate from The University of Maryland.

After retirement, Rosenblum continued to promote the ideas that had nurtured him during his days at the Photo League by encouraging a group of young photographers in Italy, and helping to arrange exhibitions of his own work and that of the Photo League in Italy, Russia and Spain. His photographs have been collected by major American and European museums; he has lectured frequently and was the author of numerous articles on photography. He thought of his own photography as a means of portraying what he felt to be a common humanity among all people.